This is something I wrote about 5 days after moving in to my new house:

Wow what a change my life has taken in the past few days. I am back at the survival level of the basic needs pyramid again. I am preocupada and paranoid about everything like when I first got here and worried incessantly about mosquitoes and infections and dirty water and motores. I realize now what a carefree, easy life I have had the past 6 months. I already have a list of things to get done tomorrow and have barely had time to stop and think. My plans: I will spend the morning sweeping up dead cockroaches and spiders and and all the dirt that falls from the roof as well as the puddles of rainwater that leak through the zinc. Then if it isn't pouring, I will open up the house to dry and air out. Then I will deal with the nest of flying ants that I just noticed a few minutes ago. Then I will check for rat poop, and cat poop, as Palomita, my cat, seems a little confused about using her sanitario. Speaking of which, I have been avoiding using my latrine because of the stories I have heard from the neighbors about snakes they have found in there, and now it is night and I really have to go. But hell no, it is better to hold it. Then tomorrow I will wash all the dishes in case some pajarito walked on them during the night. Then it will probably be time to sweep the floor again. Right now it seems an uphill battle against all forces of nature. I know it will get easier as I find rhythm and figure out how to fit in all of my oficios and still find time to do my job. But I am a true ama de casa now. Later in the day I will pick a wall to start scrubbing off all the mold and termite stains and dirt and whatever else accumulated from the last people who lived here, who apparently never cleaned. I feel like am running a halfway house for pajaritos, which with this rain is basically what my house is. Rain this hard against a zinc roof if something everyone should experience once in their life--kind of like driving through a carwash without windows. It is really nice to have the water but now there is just too much of it and I have nothing to collect in it since I have no water tank and my barrel is already full. Anyway, the pajaritos come into the house to stay dry. I now have quite the assortment of spiders, cockroaches, crickets, those flying ant things, lizards, frogs, moths, and some other things that I don't know what they are. The cockroaches gross me out but is the spiders that give me "cosa" even though I know that ellos no hacen nada. I have a nightly ritual of entering my house and going around looking for them on all the walls. For some reason it makes me feel better to know where they all are before I go to sleep. They have these eyes that glow in the dark when the light hits them and they are very mean-looking. I don't try to kill them because it scares me more to see them run. The cockroaches I have to kill, and it is the grossest sound when they pop. Then I double-check each door and window, survey my bed for pajaritos, make sure the mosquitero is tucked in, go pee in my vasinilla, blow out the lamp, and wiggle into my bed. I always wake up in the middle of the night which the electricity comes on, because invariably I've left a light switched on so I have to get up to turn it off. It still scares me a little when the light comes and goes, I am still getting used to that.

I am starting to understand more the life of a dona. Now that I am finally living alone all I want is someone to sleep with me because it is a little scary. I am beginning to see why no one lives alone, especially women. I never thought I would say this, but I see how men could be useful to have around. I would love someone to connect my gas tank, go fill up the botellon of water, patch the holes in the roof, clean up and burn all the trash in the yard, cut down the cacao turns that are leaning on the roof and make scary noises every time the wind blows, fill the cracks in the floor, replace the rotten board that fell on my bed today, build me furniture because I can't afford to buy any, and defend me against ladrones and brechadores. Brechador is a new word I learned here, and it means peeping tom. Ay, cuantas cosas. Again, I can't believe I'm saying this, but in exchange for all these things I think I would gladly cook and clean. Who would have thought I would have this sort of domestic instict? But no, I will have to get over my fear and become both the duena and dueno de la casa.

Speaking of garbage, it is absolutely disgusting and everywhere. The pile closest to my house is full of dirty diapers. I told the owner he needed to clean up the mess the last tenants left and he said he had already picked up two huge bags of diapers from the yard. SOOOOOOOOO gross. There is also underwear, toiletries--all kinds of used things they threw in the yard as they were moving.

The entry ends there. Things have changed again since I wrote that, although not so drastically. I feel like I am definitely getting the house under control, poco a poco, and making it a nice place to live. I painted, which is still a project in progress, as I've only done two rooms, but it looks pretty. I changed the dirty mustard-brown color of the bottom half of the walls to a yellowish-cream color, and it looks way cleaner and mil veces mejor. I want to paint everything, but it is a lot of work and right now I don't have the money. I have also had lots of help from friends, which is great. People don't have a lot to give but they are resourceful and like to help. Nene, who is like my mom here, had a clothes rack made of rebar that she painted and gave to me, and she found me an old pew that was in the clinic waiting room to use as a sort of shelf for my books. My dona gave me a table for the stove, and two other women gave me little tables to be fixed up. Nene and Leidy came and unpacked all of my stuff because I was too overwhelmed to do it, and teased me about all of the "basura" I horde. Yes, it is true that I have bags full of styrofoam trays and empty cans and paper used on one side and things like that, but when you live in a campo without garbage service, what else can you do? There is already enough trash in my yard for me to be adding to it. Luckily, I have I separate kitchen outside, which is what all houses here have and is where most people do all their cooking--on a wood stove called a fagon, so all of my "trash" I just put in there. I have a "kitchen" inside my house-- I say "kitchen" because it is just a room with nothing built in. Nicole did almost all of the painting because she is way faster than me, and I just did the edges because I am a perfectionist like that. Nene comes over randomly to "decorate." She found an old tinaja in the kitchen outside, which is what they used before to store water and some people still use and is basically a giant clay vase--and she cleaned it and painted it and is going to make me a giant stick/plant arrangement to put in my living room. And there are always girls around who offer to wash my dishes of mop the floor or rake outside so that is nice. People are good here. When it rains and I am not home my neighbors come take down my clothes from the clothesline. Overall, I am excited about my house and the possibilities it has. It is pretty great to live independently, so what I want, and cook for myself. Although I having done too much cooking so far because either I don't have time or forget and anyway Nene always invites me to eat at her house or brings me food. Which is lucky too because I'm not sure my salary is enough to buy food. I know for now I am spending a lot on the house, but I think even in the future I will really have to budget, and hopefully garden. There are a million things I want to experiment with growing, although the amount of trash mixed in with the dirt still scares me a little. I will have to clean the yard really well. My yard is big and almost all grass minus the piles of trash, and has a really big shade tree in front, a guava tree, plaintain trees, a couple bitter orange trees, and sugar cane. It has lots of possibilities. I want to plant guandules, which are these pea sort of things that grow on trees and are my favorite food here, as well as papaya because papaya trees grow super fast. I will plant pineapple, pepper trees, flowers, and maybe a vegetable garden too. I hope that I did not make my house sound like a place no one would want to visit--it is actually great and you should all come. I have lots of space--3 bedrooms, although still only one bed. The only really hard thing is lack of light. I was frustrated at first but realized it is all a matter of your attitude. If you expect to have no light, then you will just be pleasantly surprised if the light comes one. You just have to be comfortable with darkness, and not expect to get anything done after about 6:30 pm. Plus, the light from gas lamps and candles is nicer anyway. I have very few pajaritos anymore, as you will all be glad to hear. I think the paint helped, and maybe they have realized that the house isn't vacant anymore. I just have the occasional lizard and smallish spiders, and the other day a big frog that left huge puddle of water everytime he jumped when I poked him with a stick--I didn't realize frogs did that. Where does all the water come from?? The only menace now is my cat, who is kind of driving me nuts. She is just super needy and whiny and bites and eats people food and gets into everything, and poops and pees on everything. I think it is because she left her mom too early, so I am trying to be patient, but sometimes I kind of hope one of the stray dogs will get her. I got her to control the rat problem in my house, and now I am stuck with a crazy cat. But she is very cute and maybe one day will grow out of her bad habits. People here hate all animals, cats especially. Everyone is afraid of her and tell me that she will give me parasites that will make me sterile. Maybe it is that some of their cat-hatred is rubbing off on me. I am in the capital now, so I'm going to go eat my take-out and watch tv. Sorry it has been so long since I've been in touch--this is the first time using internet in over a month. And I went to Spain to visit my sister!! And, to sum it up, in her words: "despite a few robberies, it was a great trip." She put some pics up on facebook if you want to see what we were up to over there. I will put some pics up of my house soon too. Write to me, I want to is going on outside this tiny bubble in which I live. Love to all!!!!